Editorial: Wind tax credit should continue

The growth of Kansas’ wind energy industry may come to a screeching halt if Congress and President Barack Obama don’t agree to extend its production tax credit beyond the end of this year.

Gov. Sam Brownback, legislators and wind industry officials in Kansas already have called for an extension of the tax break.

Today, we’re adding our voice to those supporting continuation of the production tax credit.

Brownback and John Graham, chief executive officer of BP Wind Energy, suggest retaining the full federal tax credit for one more year then phasing it out gradually.

That sounds reasonable to us, especially as Brownback noted no one was suggesting the tax credit be made permanent.

Wind energy, a relatively new industry in the state, has been good to Kansas. It has generated revenue for landowners, attracted a manufacturing plant and jobs to Hutchinson and become a source of green energy for utility companies, some of which have embraced the wind energy and the power it provides.

Green energy, from wind and other sources, can be used by utilities to offset C02 emissions from more traditional means of generating electricity.

Die-hard naysayers contend wind energy in too expensive to produce and say the industry couldn’t survive without the production tax credit that has helped spawn so many wind farms.

No doubt, the tax credit has done a lot to boost the industry. But the oil industry has been around a lot longer than the wind energy industry and, the last we heard, the oil industry was doing a very good job of holding onto its tax breaks. There’s no reason the wind energy industry shouldn’t be given a little more time to become more cost-competitive and efficient.

As it is, the Siemens plant in Hutchinson has no orders for turbine units in 2013. The plant, which didn’t go into production until late in 2010, has delivered components to several states across the country and its product is important to further growth of the wind industry.

That Kansas leads the nation in installation of wind turbines this year is evidence there is a market for wind energy, albeit a market supported by the tax credit.

BP Wind Energy is working on an $800 million project in Kingman County, which will be the largest wind farm in the state. That project and others under construction will add 1,300 megawatts of energy to the 1,072 megawatts already being produced by 10 existing wind farms.

Clearly, the investment by Siemens and the companies building those wind farms has been good for Kansas. Giving the industry time to mature sounds like a logical thing to do.